International lottery faces opposition in Australia

The Alliance for Gambling Reform has voiced its opposition to companies that allow Australians to bet on overseas lottery results.

Gibraltar-based Lottoland, which runs synthetic lotteries and allows Australian to bet on overseas results, is looking to expand in the country with a profit-sharing offer to 4,000 newsagents. However, the spokesman for the anti-gambling group Alliance for Gambling Reform, Tim Costello, has voiced the organisation’s strong opposition to said business model.

“They should simply take their bat and ball and go home”, Mr Costello said and argued Lottoland’s business shouldn’t be allowed to expand in Australia since the country has already gone “way past peak gambling” and “the last thing we need is Australia’s 4,000 newsagents promoting gambling on foreign lotteries,” he told Guardian Australia.

Lottoland’s plan is to give participating newsagents a commission of 20 per cent of the profits for every bet they refer to Lottoland. They would also be asked to advertise the company in-store with promotional materials such as posters and flags for betting on international lotteries.

Lottoland Australia CEO Luke Brill added that the offer would have a positive effect on newsagents and would fill a loss in revenue for them as customers went online. He explained that they would bet on the company’s offering of overseas lotteries and wouldn’t compete with Australian lotteries.

“The challenging times faced by many newsagents relates in part to technology and in part to the way Tatts continues to push the digital sale of its products on their own website, taking revenue away from the newsagents,” he added.